


Came Dancing to My Door

by Quinara



Series: Together they Fight Crime [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, pro-choice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-06
Updated: 2010-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:16:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy isn't sure she wants a baby. In fact, she's fairly certain she doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Came Dancing to My Door

“So, let me get this straight,” Willow said, leaning back in her desk chair, a queen on a russet leather throne. “You used my Christmas gift to you, which I spent a _month_ blessing and purifying, as a _sex toy_? And Spike _swallowed it_?!”

Buffy blushed, looking down at her hands. She couldn’t help but cast her mind back, however, to the erstwhile gift’s first trialling on New Year’s Eve, at Mona and Terry’s party, which had all been terribly British and booze-filled. They’d come home, her brain swimming in champagne, and Spike’s hands had been all warm and tingly… That had been the gift, after all, Willow’s magic wristband: fuzzy stretch-flannel with a golden bead attached, to be pressed against the inside of Spike’s wrist – it made his handshake all warm and human-like, and (for those in the know) ever so slightly fey. Fizzy.

It was all his fault for keeping it on. You couldn’t blame her for enjoying its buzz as he felt around, or encouraging him to be less sparing, to rip the bead from its stitch and use it properly, with tongue. Or, you know, it should have come with a warning: small parts and a risk of swallowing…

While she reminisced, Spike snarked, “No need to get all prim and proper with us, Red.” He pressed his tongue against his teeth, very unhelpfully, but then continued, “Who’s it, your new bird? Could’ve sworn I saw a couple looking just like you in the snaps of that party, what caused such a stir in the papers last week.” Stretching out in his chair, he reached a hand across to hers, thumb unerringly finding the two rings he’d given her as the sarcasm faded from his voice. “It’s all harmless fun, innit? No need to break out the censors.”

The West Coast division head of the Watchers’ Council shook her head, drumming fingers on her stylish oak desk. “Sure, OK,” she said through her frown. “Let’s ignore the insult you’ve made to several gods I called on for their favour, the possibility they’ll count my oaths as forsworn now… What’s the what? Why are you here?”

She was so stressed these days, this Willow; Buffy wasn’t entirely sure how to talk to her. Looking at her oldest friend and the frown lines on her forehead, she felt strangely, well, married. Like there was a gulf between them, dug by the difference between her husband and all of Willow’s pretty young things, dazzling girlfriends who could nevertheless only fit for a few months around her job, before they started demanding more time than Willow had to give.

Luckily, Spike still seemed to have words. “Well,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I started feeling a bit off.”

Willow took a moment to let it sink in before leaning forward on a double take, apparently intrigued now there was a puzzle afoot. That, at least, seemed to have remained the same. “Off?” she asked. “Really? Is that, like, British for…”

Sensing that Willow was a little lost, Buffy cut in, squeezing Spike’s hand and translating, “Weird and swirly.” That was the way she understood it, anyway. “It was like hot flushes or something: one moment he felt like he did wearing the wristband, then the next he was back to normal.”

“No, it felt different to the wristband,” Spike commented, not disagreeing with her otherwise. “But I figured it was working from the inside or something.”

Willow bit her lip, steepling her fingers to her mouth. “You were digesting it, I guess.” Clearly thinking it over, she nodded. “Vampire digestion doesn’t work like humans’, obviously – they process things through magic, can suck six pints of blood into their system faster than anything. Your gut must have taken in the bead’s magic too…”

“What –” Spike paused, his fingers tight in hers, then regrouped: “What does that mean?”

“It… Could mean anything.” Willow slumped in her chair, avoiding their eyes. “Vampire physiology is really under-researched and the bead was kind of a custom build.” A notepad appeared from somewhere and Willow found a pen, scribbling down equations. “You were careful, right?” she looked up, as worried as she was making them feel. “If it affected your heart, your tissues, you might have been dealing with wounds like –”

“Like a human?” Buffy interjected, gripping Spike’s hand as her stomach sank.

“Or worse,” Willow replied, ink bleeding from her pen to stain the paper. “A human whose cells couldn’t work respiration, or…” She started getting flustered. “My god, why didn’t you tell me earlier? I could have killed you – accidentally and through your own misadventure – but I should have known tingly beads were not OK. I mean, I’ve seen you two make eyes over a rolling pin, I –”

“Will,” Spike said shortly, cutting her off. “I’m fine, yeah? That was over weeks ago.”

Pausing, Willow took a breath, pulling calm and adulthood back into her. Buffy wasn’t overly reassured. “But?” Willow asked, with a calculating apprehension.

Once again Buffy thought back, this time to the weekend and the lazy afternoon she’d spent with a Cosmo on her lap. There had been that accusatory article and she’d been thinking, with a distant sort of panic, about the reasons why her period might have been two weeks late that month. She’d asked Spike, over in the armchair, _You know those swirly turns you were having?_ , adding on his nod, _Did you ever get one when we were in bed?_ He hadn’t been able to remember, then looked at her, eyes huge. It had suddenly seemed so possible.

“We think I might be pregnant,” Buffy said, with a sigh.

For a moment, Willow did nothing, didn’t react, didn’t speak. Buffy looked at Spike, uncertain what that meant and trying to concentrate on the comforting feeling of his hand growing less and less cool beneath her grip. Then, however, her gaze was immediately drawn back to Willow, who made a sound that was almost a laugh, eyes lighting up and a grin spreading over her face. “Oh, Buffy, that’s amazing!” she said, apparently believing whatever had happened to Spike could make it true. “You could be a mom! We can find out for sure, hang on… Oh my god, aren’t you excited?”

As Willow began to eagerly type into her computer, presumably for a testing spell or something, Buffy could only smile uncertainly. “Yeah,” she tried, glancing at Spike, who turned his head to roll his eyes at her, out of Willow’s sight. “Sure…”

* * *

They drove home in the dark, conversation subdued as their SUV trundled towards the suburbs. “Well,” Buffy began. “At least Will seemed happy about it.” A few tests and they’d got the positive: she was pregnant; the embryo’s cells were all human. Buffy wasn’t sure she could process it. Willow wanted a party.

“She just invented vampire IVF, pet.” Spike kept his eyes on the road, but the line of his mouth was hard with irony. “It’s a big day for her.”

Buffy sighed. “What are we gonna do?”

He sighed with her. “Don’t have to do anything for the minute; we can think it over, do some projections.” The road was empty, so he glanced at her for a moment, eyes soft. “You’re calling the shots, right? But it doesn’t need be any different from buying the house.”

The thing was, she’d called the shots on that one too. Spike could live in a hovel, make a cottage from a crypt and a castle from a cave, but she’d wanted somewhere normal. No picket fence, but somewhere where people were happy, where children laughed in the street and rode their bikes, somewhere she could have imagined her mom coming to visit, where the sun glinted on mailboxes and the Slayer’s darkness didn’t lurk behind her shoulder.

She’d wanted all that, but did she actually want a _child_? Off-handedly she said, “I guess the HOA does give that extra vote to families.”

Clearly, however, that wasn’t the right thing to say. Spike’s mood instantly darkened, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “We _are_ a bloody family,” he muttered. “Gits here…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to – she knew the line by heart. _Gits here can’t see past their own noses; you think they’d let Dawn and Satsu buy in? Even with Mikey and Jun?_

Biting her lip, she watched him drive, the car forcing him to sit like a soccer mom, upright and looking down at the traffic. He didn’t like where they lived, she knew that, even if he could be happy there. He didn’t like that she’d asked him to dress in chinos and a collared shirt when they’d come to view the house. He’d done it because he loved her, in the same way as she knew he’d father their child if she asked, even if he didn’t want to. He’d playact being human twenty-four hours a day, just for the chance to be with her.

It wasn’t fair – and she hated that part of him thought it was. “Do you,” she began, before pausing. “Do you _know_ , have you worked out, do you want a baby?”

He slowed down, easing the car off the freeway as his jaw ticked. At length he relented, admitting, “Sometimes. You see some bugger on the street, getting in a row with his spitting image, and you think, that’s what life should be.” He looked at her again, another moment. “Seeing you and me, genes all mixed up on the face of one little person, growing up, becoming real? Could be perfect.”

She smiled, knowing exactly what he meant. “But then again,” she cracked, half-heartedly. “They could just look like Dawn.”

“Yeah,” he replied softly. “But they could look like your mum.”

A lump in her throat, she agreed, “Or yours.”

Abruptly changing the mood again, Spike sniffed through the silence in that dismissive punk way of his. “But it’s all a joke, innit? How could I be a father? Poor thing wouldn’t understand why I was never there, would resent me for sitting out its parties in the gloom.”

She remembered all her father’s reasons for his absence, the way she’d felt every one as an excuse. “You think it wouldn’t like _you_?” She tried to cheer him up. “At least you’re emotionally available. Me? Not so much. I’d be scolding it for skinned knees and sending it to bed without even a Daffy Duck band aid.”

Fondly, he smiled. “You’re a harsh mistress.” Somehow, when he said it, it felt like a compliment. “But you’d be forgiven,” he continued, a little glum. “Your warmth, your life, your love… Kids respond to that, feel all snuggly and safe, even if they’re fifteen and halfway to a crack habit. Me, on the other hand…” He trailed off for a moment, not looking at her but out into the middle distance, possibly seeing his future. “I’m dead. And people know it, too. Even if they can’t put their finger on what it is about me, they know it, just like any kid we had would be able to tell.”

“You never feel dead to me,” she replied sincerely, meeting his grim smile with her own. She didn’t know whether it was the right thing to say and there seemed to be some sort of doubt in his eyes, but hopefully he took the sentiment all the same.

When they arrived home, Illyria was waiting for them. She didn’t know what was going on, but she quickly understood that this wasn’t a night for taking Spike on an investigative jaunt around the city. Saving them from a night of awkward half-conversation, she came inside and sat as they watched the TV, mocking them for their pizza choices.

“I offer congratulation and commiseration,” she said at one point. “You may choose which you desire to take up.”

“Thank you,” Buffy replied for the moment – and it was definitely heartfelt.

* * *

The weekend rolled around again and Buffy took the train out of town to Dawn and Satsu’s house. Spike was researching demons with Lorne and their thoughts hadn’t really moved on since the night in the car, so she was hoping for some fresh perspective.

The door opened with a rush of air that smelled like home. Buffy had no idea how Dawn had managed to replicate the smell of their old house in LA, or whether it came naturally, but it always pricked her eyes. “Buffy, hi!” Dawn greeted, offering a hug then waving her inside. “It’s so great to see you!”

Smiling, Buffy followed Dawn through her house, noticing, for the first time, how full of shoes the hallway was and how much noise was coming from the living room. Chirpy music was playing, a video game's(?), complete with pings and explosions. Cutting through it all, however, there suddenly came a baby’s screechy half-cry and Dawn immediately spun around, working out the scene.

It was even louder out of the hallway. Mikey, Dawn’s three-year-old, was dancing in front of the TV screen, waving his controller as a cartoon dinosaur jumped across platforms and pipes, grabbing coins and jumping on mushrooms. By his feet, baby Jun was sat on her backside, reaching up towards her brother’s hands with tears in her big dark eyes.

“Mikito Summers-Takai,” Dawn said sharply, causing the boy to spin around and the dinosaur to fall down a hole to the sound of plaintive cartoon music. “I told you already; let your sister take a turn.”

“But, _Moooommy_ ,” Mikey whined, “she can’t _play_.”

“Well, then, you can teach her,” Dawn replied, not missing a step, but nevertheless barely sounding like Dawn as she channelled exasperated mothers the world over. “You have to share with her, remember? What if she didn’t share _her_ toys?” Mikey scowled, but Dawn stayed firm. “And say hello to your Aunt Buffy.”

Buffy waved and said hello, knowing that was her cue. Turning perfunctorily in her direction, Mikey met her eyes with a flinty childish bitterness and said “Hi Aunt Buffy,” with as little feeling as possible, before slumping on the turquoise carpet. He deftly began a new game, then thrust the stick at Jun, who clapped an inelegant hold on the plastic and promptly brought the controller to her mouth. The dinosaur jumped aimlessly around the screen.

Dawn looked satisfied, leading Buffy to the sofa at the other end of the room, out of earshot but not sight of the children. They watched and Mikey slowly seemed to realise that, with Jun sat between his legs, he could essentially play the game by guiding her gestures in the right direction, which seemed to cheer him up.

“And that, I guess,” Dawn said, revealing some nerves, “is how you parent?”

“It looks like he’s getting on OK with Jun,” Buffy offered, slightly dumbfounded as giggles started joining the game’s nerve-grating soundtrack. “I can’t believe it’s been so long…” She worked out the numbers. Eight whole months Jun had been with them, from her birth mother’s arms into the Summers-Takai household. It probably seemed like aeons to little Mikey.

“I know.” Dawn shook her head, slumping deeper into the navy cushions. “I think he likes having her around; I mean, he’s such a chatterbox so he likes having someone there to listen – and she’s getting old enough to play games and things, so, you know.” She shrugged.

“What…” Buffy started, wanting to change the subject slightly. There was so much she wanted to ask. They’d adopted Jun, but Mikey was genetically half Dawn, all turkey-baster living-the-dream. Watching them play together, you really couldn’t tell, and even though Satsu was in the kitchen right now she knew they looked like a family. But there had to be a reason, didn’t there, why they hadn’t chosen pregnancy a second time?

With the look of someone who knew serious things were afoot, Dawn asked, “Buffy?”

Finally she managed, “Why, um, did you and Satsu choose adoption, when you had Jun?”

Dawn quirked her eyebrow, whether an (old) Takai or (older) Pratt influence Buffy couldn’t be sure. “Why do you ask?”

Not wanting to affect what she would say, Buffy took a breath and obfuscated. “Just curious,” she said with a very un-breezy shrug. “If you’re comfortable with telling me, I mean.”

Dawn didn’t look convinced. Cautiously, she began, “Well. I guess it was mostly the strangeness. We…” She shifted, committing to the explanation. “You know how Andrew still comes out with us most weekends, but it’s never been that anybody figured him and me for the couple?” Buffy nodded, remembering that she hadn’t even done that herself, as clueless (and disorientated) as she’d been. “We figured that was how the vibe was,” Dawn continued, a residual anger tinting her voice, “but the moment you got a bump involved, apparently, Satsu might as well have been a stranger. People kept on assuming, over and over again; by the end Andy was pulling some seriously convoluted metaphors when people tried to shake his hand.” She smiled, glancing over to the dining table, just beyond the children, before looking back to Buffy. “And you _know_ Tsu found that hilarious – but neither of us liked the rest of it.” She sighed. “The way we figured it, even the mixed-race boy in the stroller wouldn’t make people get a clue – and we both believe in nurture over nature, so, we thought, why not?”

Buffy nodded, taking it in and wondering what to say. There was a window behind them, the sun warm on her neck, and it was strange. Strange to be in this much sunlight and trying to come up with an opinion on children. “That sucks,” she said, unsatisfactorily, feeling out of her depth.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “OK,” she riposted, her tone recalling the bratty younger sister inside her as she realised something was up. “You think I’m giving that much up without some Buffy-angst in return?” Her eyes, however, were mommish, warm and open. She asked gently, “What’s going on?”

Telling her, Buffy watched her sister’s frown increase, at least a small amount of the complexity apparently getting through, though the more she spoke the more she realised how little sense it made to her. This whole situation wasn’t something she should ever have had to deal with.

When she’d finished, Dawn replied with, “Oh,” struck still. “Oh, _Buffy_ … You shouldn’t listen to me about pregnancy, you know; and once the baby comes, then, you know, the bump’s a person so it all completely changes to, like, a totally different _deal_.” She glanced to her own children once again, probably trying to imagine a cousin Buffy couldn’t even picture herself. “Do you guys want a child?” she asked, looking at Buffy seriously.

“I…” Buffy tried to respond, floundering. “We don’t know. I mean, it’s hard, and – and Willow was so excited about it and this is probably the only chance we’ll have, ‘cause I doubt we’d ever pass the agency’s checks, but it’s so sudden and _so_ unexpected, and…”

Pulling her serious-mom look again, Dawn asked, “Are you saying you’ve never thought about it?” She looked like she wanted an answer, that was the scary thing. “Because if you’ve never thought about it, if you’ve never wanted a baby, then maybe it _isn’t_ right for you, you know? That’s an OK choice to make.”

She tried to think, forcing her mind back. “I don’t know, Dawn, I…” Buffy felt lost. “I was so young and then, I mean, then I always thought, well – I had you.”

Dawn blinked, glancing away, touched, before she drew her into a hug. All Buffy could think was that it was true: Dawn had become so important to her, along the way, and even when she’d avoided the responsibility she had never thought there was a space in her life a baby could come and fill. Even now that they were older, Buffy wasn’t sure how it would work.

“Whatever you choose, Buffy,” Dawn told her, emphatically, “that’s OK.”

 _But what if I let people down?_ Buffy thought, uncertain she could voice it. _What if I’m making a mistake?_

* * *

Her thoughts didn’t work themselves out until later. She’d come home to find Spike already there, Johnny Rotten swearing blue murder from the stereo as _Bodies_ went round for what was likely the sixth or seventh time. Straddling his lap on impulse, she’d kissed his brooding mouth and told him she was sick of thinking, asked whether he’d like to join her upstairs to seek out some oblivion.

Oblivion had come and come again, but now, this last time, she collapsed beneath him with a scream. Eyes closed, she found herself on the bones of his forearms, still wrapped around her, as he panted hoarsely by her ear, lips pulling on hair as his ribcage struggled to expand against her spine. The fall hadn’t entirely been planned (if ‘planned’ was a word you could use), so his cock was out of her ass and adding to the impressively wide damp spot, while the vibrator, slipped from his fingers, buzzed on the mattress between their legs – but that didn’t matter. It was all good.

As Spike reached to find the toy, arm jammed underneath her pelvis but finally making the noise stop, Buffy found herself weighing up the quite sincere merits of recreational sex. Preternatural stamina: this was what it was about.

That, however, was when the other thoughts came haring in, because what was recreational if not _not_ procreational? How could anyone, any force of the universe, meet her and Spike and get the two confused? How could anyone even think they might be trying for a baby, that they were normal enough to have one? How could she ever hold her head up high, a baby on her arm, and let people think that that was who they were? William, Buffy and the little one, from the house down the street?

 _Oh god._ Her mind lurched, hitting a wall of realisation. _I don’t want it. I don’t want it. Oh god oh god oh god oh god –_ She was gripped completely and utterly by the knowledge that there was some sort of life growing inside her, cells dividing two-by-two – some totally normal human life, the kind you found in this sort of house, the kind their neighbours made: strange and alien normality, like a mathematically perfect apple pie. The antithesis of them, set to take over their lives.

Spike was rolling away now, leaving her with an afterglowy bite on her ear, but she rolled with him, rolled faster as he lay back on a clean patch of sheet, curling into his chest as she suddenly and unavoidably burst into tears.

“Buffy?” he asked her, immediately sitting upright and holding her with the energy only a vampire could still have. It made her sob harder. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Shh…”

Unstably perched in his lap, fingers clutching his shoulders, she tried to explain, focusing on and relishing the way his body was losing heat to the night air. “I don’t want the baby,” she said desperately, breath hitching as she squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want the baby; I want it out of me; I want it to _stop_ , stop growing, stop existing; I don’t want it, I _don’t_ –”

“Shh,” he responded, kissing her temple and running his hands up her back, fingers thrumming along her spine. “It’s okay, yeah? It’s all right.”

His words soothed her, enough at least for her to recognise that he sounded entirely nonplussed. It wasn’t exactly surprising; she was fairly sure her own brain wasn’t working 100% yet, even as her fear started running through its corridors. Gathering herself, she looked up and slipped from his legs, giving them space to talk. Through her tear-clouded eyes she could see his frown of confusion, his worry even as one hand rested on her shin, thumb calmly stroking calf. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I – I know I said I didn’t know, but it all came together, just…”

“Can see that, pet.” He smiled wryly and she felt a sudden flush of love, right where no embryo should have been. “What I’m lost on is the logic,” he continued. “Call me a simple soul if you like, but I was rather distracted by the epic shag.”

A breath of laugher escaping her, she had to kiss him then, leaning forward with her gaze locked on his dancing eyes. She was still loose enough to make it sweet and long, seeking out the last of her warmth that had seeped into the depths of him, and her mind was more than happy to drift for a moment.

Calm at last she pulled back, blinking the last of her tears from her eyes. “I guess that was it, you know, the epic?” She gestured to the ugly sheet behind her. “Definite ‘go us’ moment, yay for superpowers. Right?”

Spike nodded slowly. “Right.”

“And that’s who we are, isn’t it? Slayer and vampire, wicked strong and stamina-happy.” She added, quickly, “I mean, OK, I don’t slay things anymore, but…” Spike shifted earnestly, pulling her legs closer to him: always the protector when she needed it. “No matter who we are outside, the face we need to show the world.” _The face **I** need to show the world, which you help me create._ “In here, when it’s just us, you could never call us human.”

Like he needed her to believe it, Spike told her, “Buffy, love, you _are_ …”

“But _you’re not_ ,” she cut him off, reaching out an arm and splaying her palm across his still and silent chest. Water beaded in her eyes as he stared back at her, face open with awe. “I love _you_ , Spike, _you_. This life inside me…” She couldn’t bear to touch her stomach, shaking her head in rejection. “I don’t recognise it. I – ” She laughed, shortly, considering her words and then saying them anyway. “I know how you feel inside me –” He grinned and she grinned with him. “– and it shouldn’t feel like this. I don’t – _understand_ how a human baby can be our child. That’s not who we are and it feels so wrong.”

It was only after she said it that she realised it was entirely possible he would take this the wrong way, as a rejection of his child, on what was likely the only occasion he’d ever get to offer her one. She bit her lip as the silence dragged on; Spike was smiling, just, but the curve of his mouth seemed unstable and wobbling.

“Are you, um, disappointed?” she asked, mind immediately backtracking as she tried to convince herself that maybe nine months of pregnancy wouldn’t be that bad; you got used to children, right? Grew to love them when you held them in your arms?

Spike let out a snort of air, shaking his head and momentarily lost for words. “Once, maybe,” he finally began, “when I was alive, perhaps I hoped for children…” He paused, meeting her eyes. “But, Buffy…” Now the smile blossomed on his face, eyes lighting up as her heart pattered in response. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just _said_. What you… That we’re not living out some sort of sham here, that it’s really you and me, that we’re… _Fuck._ ”

He leapt towards her, rolling them across the mattress like they were in a movie field of tulips, laughing and pulling laughter from her. She ended up beneath him, strained in an arch as his kisses sank into her mouth and their thighs twined tight together. “Christ, I love you,” he swore.

“This is it,” she insisted, trailing fingers down one cool bicep. “This is what I want. This is our family. The pair of us: not human, not normal.”

“But randier than a pair of March hares,” Spike confirmed, winking as he sank his mouth to her breast.

OK, given the context, that was all kinds of – well, she would say ‘perverse’, but, honestly? She couldn’t give a damn.


End file.
